Buddhist on later Serpent In In he resigns himself to his control. If we did not know that Buddhism was itself an outgrowth from primitive Brahmanism, we might hold this code to be simple Buddhism, with the addition of a personal God. But knowing, as we do, that Bráhmanism and Buddhism were themselves closely connected, and that they combined to form Hinduism; it is impossible to discriminate how far Hinduism was made up by direct transmission from Buddhism or from Bráhmanism. The influence of Buddhism on the Christianity of the western influences world has been referred to at p. 152. Whatever uncertainties religions. may still obscure that question, the effect of Buddhism upon the present faiths of Eastern Asia admits of no doubt. The best elements in the teaching of Buddha have survived in modern Hinduism; and Buddhism carried with it essential doctrines of Bráhmanism to China and Japan, together with certain characteristics of Indian religious art. The snake ornamen ornamentation, which figures so universally in the religion tation : of India, is said to have been carried by Buddhism alike to the east and the west. Thus, the canopy or baldachino over Hinduism; Buddha's head delights in twisted pillars and wavy patterns. These wave-like ornaments are conventionalized into Buddhism; cloud curves in most of the Chinese and Japanese canopies; but some of them still exhibit the original figures thus symbolized as undulating serpents or Nágás. A serpent baldachino of this sort may be seen in a monastery at Ningpo. It takes the place of the cobra-headed canopy, which in India shelters the head of Siva, or of Vishnu as he slept upon the waters at the creation of the world. The twisted columns which support the baldachino at St. Peter's in Rome, and the fluted ornamentation so common over Protestant pulpits, are said to have a serpentine origin, and an eastern source. The association of Buddha with two other figures, in the Japanese temples, perhaps represents a recollection of the Brahman triad. The Brahmanical idea of trinity, in its Buddhist development as Buddha, Dharma (the Law), and Sangha (the Congregation), deeply penetrates the faith. The Sacred Tooth of Buddha at Ceylon is a reproduction of the phallic linga of India. In Chris tian art. Coalition of Buddhism with earlier religions: Buddhism readily coalesced with the pre-existing religions of primitive races. Thus, among the hill tribes of Eastern Bengal, we see the Khyaungthas, or 'Children of the River,' The authority for this statement is an unpublished drawing by Miss Gordon Cumming. COALITION OF CREEDS. 203 passing into Buddhists without giving up their aboriginal rites. In India ; They still offer rice and fruits and flowers to the spirits of hill and stream; and the Buddhist priests, although condemning the custom as unorthodox, do not very violently oppose it. In In Japan. Japan, a Buddhist saint visited the hill-slope of Hotoke Iwa in 767 A.D.; declared the local Shinto deity to be only a manifestation of Buddha; and so converted the old idolatrous highplace into a Buddhist shrine. Buddhism has thus served as Shrines a link between the ancient faiths of India and the modern common to worship of the eastern world. It has given sanctity to the centres faiths. of common pilgrimage, to which the great faiths of Asia resort. Thus, the Siva-worshippers ascend the top of Adam's Peak in Adam's Ceylon, to adore the footprint of their phallic god, the Sivapada; the Buddhists repair to the spot to revere the same symbol as the footmark of Buddha; and the Muhaınmadans venerate it as a relic of Adam, the Semitic father of mankind. various Peak. Sarwar. Many common shrines of a similar character exist in India. Sakhi The famous place of pilgrimage at Sakhi Sarwar crowns the high bank of a hill stream at the foot of the Suláimán range, in the midst of desert scenery, well adapted to penitents who would mortify the flesh. To this remote spot, the Muhammadans come in honour of a Musalmán saint; the Sikhs to venerate a memorial of their theistic founder, Nának; and the Hindus to perform their own ablutions and rites. The mount near Madras, associated in Catholic legend with the martyrdom of St. Thomas, was originally a common hill-shrine for Muhammadans, Christians, and Hindus. Such hill-shrines for joint worship are usually either rock-fortresses, like Kalinjar in the North-Western Provinces and Chunar overhanging the Ganges, or river-islands, like the beautiful islet on the Indus just below the new railway bridge at Sakkar. The object of common adoration is frequently a footmark in stone. This the Hindus venerate as the footprint of Vishnu or Siva (Vishnupad or Sivapad); while the Musalmáns revere it as the footprint of Muhammad (Kadam-rasul). The mingled architecture of some of these pilgrim-sites attests the various races and creeds that combined to give them sanctity. Buddhism, which in some respects was at first a revolt against Bráhman supremacy, has done much to maintain the continuity between the ancient and the modern religions of India. Hinduism, however, derived its elements not merely from 1 See Hunter's Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. vi. p. 40, etc. Non elements in the two ancient Aryan faiths, the Bráhmanical and the BudAryan dhist. In its popular aspects, it drew much of its strength, Hinduism. and many of its rites, from the Nágá and other non-Aryan peoples of India. Buddhists and Bráhmans alike endeavoured, during their long struggle, to enlist the masses on their side. The Nágá kingdoms were divided, as we have seen, by the Chinese geographers into those which had accepted Buddhism, and those which had not. A chief feature Nágá rites. in Nágá - worship was the reverence for dragons or tailed monsters. This reverence found its way into medieval Buddhism, and became an important element in Buddhist mythology. The historian of Tree and Serpent worship goes so far as to say that 'Buddhism was little more than a revival of the coarser superstitions of the aboriginal races, purified and refined by the application of Aryan morality.'1 Serpent worship in Hinduism. Phallic emblems in Hinduism. The great monastery of Nalanda owed its foundation to the supposed influence of a tailed monster, or Nágá, in a neighbouring tank. Many Hindu temples still support colonies of sacred crocodiles; and the scholar who has approached the subject from the Chinese point of view, comes to the conclusion that no superstition was more deeply embedded in the [ancient] Hindu mind than reverence for Nágás or dragons. Buddhism from the first had to contend as much against the under current of Nágá reverence in the popular mind, as against the supercilious opposition of the philosophic Brahman in the upper current. At last, as it would seem, driven to an extremity by the gathering cloud of persecution, the Buddhists sought escape by closing with the popular creed, and endeavouring to enlist the people against the priests; but with no further success than such a respite as might be included within some one hundred years.' 2 This conception of the process is coloured by modern elem ideas, but there can be no doubt that Hinduism incorporated many aboriginal rites. It had to provide for the non-Aryan as well as for the Aryan elements of the population, and it combined the Bráhmanism and Buddhism of the Aryans with the fetish-worship and religion of terror which swayed the nonAryan races. Some of its superstitions seem to have been brought by Turanian or Scythian migrations from Central Asia. Serpent-worship is closely allied to, if indeed it does 1 Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship, pp. 62, with footnote, et seq. (4to, 1868). This view must be taken subject to limitations. 2 Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, pp. 415, 416. Fy Samuel Beal (Trübner, 1871). not take its origin in, that reverence for the symbols of human reproduction which formed one of the most widely-spread religions of pre-historic man. Phallic or generative emblems are on earth what the sun is in the heavens. The sun, as the type of celestial creative energy, was a primitive object of Aryan adoration. Later Bráhmanism, and its successor Hinduism, seem to have adopted not only the serpent, but the linga and The Hindu yoni, or the terrestrial organs of male and female creative linga and energy, from the non-Aryan races. The early Aryan ritual of the Vedas was addressed to the elements, particularly to Fire. yoni. The worship of the phallic emblem or linga finds only a doubtful sanction, if any at all, in those ancient scriptures; 1 but the Puránas disclose it in full vigour (1000 A.D.); and the Muhammadans found it in every part of India. It is not only the chief religion to the south of the Vindhyas, but it is universally recognised by the Hindus. Such symbolism fitted well into the character of the third person of their triad—Siva, the Reproducer, as well as the All-Destroyer. To the Bráhmans it supplied a popular basis for their abstruse doctrines. regarding the male and female energy in nature. Phallic The worship harmonized also with their tendency to supply each god 'creative with a correlative goddess, and furnished an easily-understood energy.' symbolism for the Sákta sects, or worshippers of the divine creative power, so numerous among the Hindus. For the semi-aboriginal tribes and half- Hinduized low-castes, this conception of Siva as the All-Destroyer and Reproducer, organized on a philosophical basis their old religion of propitiation by blood.3 The fetish and tree worship of the non-Aryan races also Fetishentered largely into Hinduism. The first Englishman who worship in Hinduism, tried to study the natives as they actually are, and not as the Brahmans described them, was struck by the universal prevalence of a worship quite distinct from that of the Hindu deities. A Bengal village has usually its local god, which it adores The sála 1 H. H. Wilson's Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. p. 220 (ed. 1862). 2 Sakti. 3 The relation of these rites of the semi-Hinduized low-castes to the religion of the non-Aryan races is treated at considerable length, from personal observation, in Hunter's Annals of Rural Bengal, pp. 127-136 and 194, 5th edition. Dr. Francis Buchanan, who afterwards took the name of Hamilton. His survey of the North-Eastern Districts of Bengal, 1807-13, forms a noble grám. Vishnuite either in the form of a rude unhewn stone, or a stump, or a tree marked with red-lead. Sometimes a lump of clay placed under a tree does for a deity; and the attendant priest, when there is one, generally belongs to the half-Hinduized low-castes. The rude stone represents the non-Aryan fetish; and the tree seems to owe its sanctity to the non-Aryan belief that it forms the abode of the ghosts, or gods, of the village. We have seen how, in some Santáli hamlets, the worshippers dance round every tree; so that they may not, by any evil chance, miss the one in which the village spirits happen to dwell. As the non-Aryan phallic emblems were utilized by Hindusymbols. ism in the worship of Siva, the All-Destroyer and Reproducer. so the household fetish sálagrám has supplied a symbol for the rival Hindu deity Vishnu, the Preserver. The sálagrám (often an ammonite or curved stone) and the tulasi plant are the insignia of Vishnuism, as universally as the linga is of Sivaism. In both cases the Bráhmans enriched the popular fetish-worship with deep metaphysical doctrines, and with admirable moral codes. The Sivaite devotee carries round his neck, or hidden about his person, a miniature phallic emblem, linga; the sálagrám and tulasi are the objects of reverence among all the Vishnuite sects.1 Jungle rites. The great Vishnuite festival of Bengal, the rath-játra, when Jagannath, the 'Lord of the World,' is dragged in his car to his garden - house, is of Buddhist origin. But it has many a humbler counterpart in the forest excursions which the Bengal villagers make in their holiday clothes to some sacred tree in the neighbouring grove or jungle. These jungle rites find special favour with the low-castes, and disclose curious survivals of the non-Hinduized element in the worshippers. Blood sacrifices and the eating of flesh have long been banished from the popular Vishnuite sects. But on such forest festivals, the fierce aboriginal instincts even in the mixed castes, who accept in ordinary life the restraints of Hinduism, break loose. Cowherds have been seen to series of MS. folios in the India Office, much in need of a competent editor. Montgomery Martin made three printed volumes out of them ly the process of drawing his pencil through the parts which did not interest him, or which he could not understand. These he published under the title of the History, Antiquities, Topography, and Statistics of Eastern India (3 vols., 1838). 1 Sec, inter alia, pp. 15, 39, 50, 54, 116, 117, 140, 149, 179, 181, 246, vol. i. of H. H. Wilson's Religion of the Hindus (ed. 1862). |